The current live build is extremely stale and flawed. There really isn't much to it. Aliens grab 1 RT, go cara, then hold off till the 3-4 man fade ball rolls the field. That's just one of the issues in live build. There is a 60 page thread about the different issues balance test attempts to fix. This thread really doesn't need to reiterate that. Is current BT perfect? No. The "don't want to learn new game" argument doesn't really help anyone either. Play the mod, address issues you actually experience. That way we can all have input into the mod and hopefully revitalize this dying community.
Edit in response to Simba:
No one is asking you to not play vanilla at all. Keep playing vanilla. Keep practicing vanilla. We all are still doing that to stay competitive. All we are asking when we say "play the balance mod and give feedback" is to jump in a game every once in a while and comment on what you like and dislike. That way, you DO have some input on the changes that are coming to the game. I am fairly positive that the movement will be implemented eventually. Getting at least a taste of it might help you "stay competitive" once competition is forced to use the new movement.
I'm not sure if my point was clear. In order to be capable of providing good and effective feedback of the balance mod, I should be good at the end game of the mod, which implies being able to use each life form to its potential. In order to do that, I must invest time relearning how to play life forms according to the balance mod. Then I can provide feedback if something if OP or not. Well, that's a lot of time invested relearning something that might not ever be relevant in a competitive environment, or will change completely in a few days, and time that could be spent practicing vanilla. My point is changes to the game, post launch, should not be so sweeping and sudden.
Also, the state the game is in, combined with these rumors that the mod is coming, does not inspire confidence in the stability of the gaming platform.
BiteyJoin Date: 2012-05-06Member: 151622Members, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester
This is my TLDR report that I've been spending a few days working on. It represents mostly a first impression look at how the balance mod appears at the point of trying it out with only live build experiance. So enjoy the entire thing and I hope you manage to finish it out. I've included a quick summery near the bottom incase anyone want's to skip to the main points.
After a coinflip decision, I decided to post this here rather then the actual BT thread post in the general thread.
ENJOY and BEGIN
________
There are so many changes in the BT that trying to go over every single one takes up so much time that I'd rather focus only on the things I have an actual issues with. The prime complaint of mine is simply the movement system that's being crafted to be in place. When I played the BT I jumped directly into a 6v6 with no experience expect what I knew from live. The goal was to give me the best feeling of what it would be like for the rest of the community who simply 'play' the game and nothing else. This lead me to an experience that for the most part was semi-enjoyable on marine, and a larger struggle on alien.
Aliens
The alien side was stressful due to the fact that all forms of live movement are essentially removed. If you claim that something is left over, then you learned skulk movement differently from myself and I give you congratulations on being a true master. My struggles came from the raw overwhelming changes to everything having a different feel, so that lead to a very unenjoyable experience. It's not to say that I will want to burn the BT alien side with fire I could probably love it in the future given some extra cuddling, but if my first impression is this negative towards the change what does that say about someone who's uninformed? The movement being a complete rewrite means that none of the experience learned can be transferred over, this leads to a knowledge that in order to retain the confidence of movement I had prior, would to me mean at least 10-20hrs of focus on the task.
I ask what the real issue is with live skulk movement, my personal thought are that it's too slow. The B239 skulk had great potential and was also easy to teach and explain, however with small flaws in different places it could have been polished up to be more enjoyable for all parties. The current live skulk is something that is extremely stressful to play due to a lack of easy ways to gain a boost of speed to leave fights or pressure into a room easily. Why was the thought of never looking into the past versions of wall jumping reexamined? The last round of complaints I remember from back then it was too easy/simple. Which is hardly a problem given the fact that movement should be very straightforward.
Here is a complexity example of the BT movement vs Live:
Explain how to gain and maintain speed as skulk and fade?
Live Skulk: Jump off walls and chain wall jumps together to gain speed. jump off from higher points for an extra speed boost.
Fade: Shadow step in one of the 8 directions, and utilize your double jump for extra travel. Use air control to make sharp turns.
**If there is one problem with live Fade, it's that shadowstep costs too little so that energy management is not very important for maintaining movement. Another problem is that explaining air control is very challenging.
I'd like someone from the balance mod break down how to simplify the movement from the BT. Since I honestly haven't really studied it much and currently aren't a great source of learning it.
BTSkulk:
BTFade:
Honestly if you take a more combined approach to the movement setups utilizing both live and BT creations you should be able to get something that is not a whole new movement system. Instead you could create a potent upgrade which leads to ease of use and a more complex utilization. First would be the implementation of jump querying on live, that could easily be patched in with any build. Second would be to add in how the acceleration from walls occurred in patches prior to b239 perhaps making it harder/take longer to gain speed by chaining jumps together. Then utilize adding a speed cap of 11/13 so that skulks aren't that much faster then lerks, and make sure that it's challenging to keep the rate of speed around those levels.
To sum it up, the movement doesn't need to be rewritten it simply needs to be tweaked in small ways from live to create a much more enjoyable experience. The fact that the fade was overhauled is something of a different approach, and I still don't really have an understanding as to why it was changed other then to just 'change it up.' Alien movement is alittle too far off from live build and in my view a few extra attempts should be made to bridge the gap.
Marine
The marine game was substantially more enjoyable for the reasoning that it actually carries over much of the same skills learned from the live build. This leads to an experience that gives a fresh approach, while still maintaining most of the gameplay functional. Overall it's a mostly positive change from the field players view, and I can see that almost all of the current changes to marine game could be ported over. My only minor gripes revolved around the AR spread changes and the new armory approach.
While it's not game breaking, the question of why the AR has more spread deserves a valid question. I dont really recall anything of frustration happening the live build as a result of rifles appearing overpowered in anyway and while I haven't played much of the BT, I'm curious as to why this change was thrown in if there was any significant problem. The fault with the rifle is that the spread is truly random, so you have no real guarantee that shooting in the center will land the first, last, or middle shots. This leads to more wasted ammo, less accuracy, and stopping power in the long term. If you're going to attempt to continue utilize a random cone fire, the cone should start smaller at the start of shooting then grow over time. Sorry but I'm not sold that random cones are enjoyable, just look at how people complain about random shotgun spreads in the past.
If the original problem with the AR is that it was too hard to use, perhaps checking into the scenario of lowering the amount of bullets per clip, raising the damage per bullet, and adjusting the rate of fire. A big problem with alot of newer players is the sheer amount of wasted bullets fired from the AR, mostly due to player inexperience, skill, or the enemies movement. A larger bullet, slower ROF, and more damage could attempt to alliterate some of the rifles high skill requirement.
The armory change is probably one of the more understand fixes put into the game, but I believe that this approach is simply too hardlined and trying to force teamwork onto a team. It was once tried in the past, then removed. The reasons for it's removal I've forgotten, but why not just try a slowed armory healing/armor recovery? This is @andi, if the real problem is that marine teams turtle, in public games they already lose for doing that. Unless the new marine changes have made a marine turtle extremely valid, that seems that something else may need to be considered.
AA's cost too much, unless you rewrite how they work for healing armor, weapons, and other factors. And make it a much quicker upgrade for a field ARMOR healing Armory. In fact if you're going to change the armory to not heal armor anymore, then it might as well be called supply station. As you get guns and weapons, but no armor.
All in all, most marine changes would probably be fine. But it's always best to be wary about trying to force teamwork onto people, and there should typically be an option to solo heal from something much easier then say a mac or welder.
Bitey's view's on why NS2 loses new players
--I wont say anything about performance, because that's a whole different basket of things not relating directly to gameplay. And hopefully luaJit takes a big bite out of that issue.
If the balance test is trying to settle the imbalance in the core of the game by it's namesake, then the real issues with why people leave still aren't being targeted. It's never been much about the state of the gameplay in terms of who wins what, or why one team wins over another. After all consider that what determines a win is usually reliant on what players understand they need to do in order to create a win. New players pick the game up, start playing, and learning weapons. However in ns2 weapon mastery, frags, and raw personal skill only make up part of what it takes to win. A major problem with ns2 is that nothing in public game play conveys the decision making tactics that lead to repeated and formulaic success.
To have an example of this, you merely need to look at the swaying wins and losses of both public games and PCW/scrim/matches. Aliens have, and always will be favored given enough time simply because of the side being easier to play. The decision making process of the Khaara side is basic, defend your ground as needed and attack enemy buildings when openings are present. Just repeat that cycle, stay in the game, and wait for high lifeforms to help give you a push off point. This process shows in games where aliens win the majority of the time and typically every mistake a skulk makes can be overlooked for several deaths in a row minus trying to save those precious havestors. For everything else dying on the field is only an inconvenience due to the movement aliens enjoy. It takes multiple deaths in a row before the effects of repeated personal failure to make a sizable impact to team performance.
However, while the alien team is usually easier to play you can witness the mixed results of pub knowledge vs match knowledge when new competitive teams forms. Often any new alien team employ the wrong set of attacks and defenses that would ordinarly secure them a win. For example if a marine team pressures one havestor with a 4 man team, is the proper response to defend, hit marine rts, or hit marine start? Often those kind of decisions are real plays that make the best teams succeed. I would credit Arc as being an example of almost always making the right play call, which is why winning seems to be their specialty.
The contrast to this is how the marine side struggles to take victories away past the 5 minute openings mark of the game. For a marine player he must always try to outplay the alien side by several factors of performance. The problems not only come from the multiple jobs the basic marines must employ. You are the builder, defender, and attacker which leads to multiple different things to be considered before making any action. Each of those roles are crucial to survive a game against the alien menace. If you fail to build you're economy and tech falls behind, if you fail to defend then all the time spent building needs to simply be repeated, and if you simply never attack into alien territory you're still going to be doomed into failure simply because alien's are much more expendable while attacking into marines. Every small decision matters just as much as making sure every bullet counts, if you check the wrong corner and get fragged you may lose much more then your own weapon out of said mistake.
All of these issues collide together and form a game that is extremely daunting for any random new player to attempt to learn. So what needs to be strongly investigated is a method on how to teach a person the basics. More then just raw skills needed to shoot and perform, but several of the basic decision making foundations. A tutorial map would be the best place to start, and I'd tried to hand that to the community who are full of people willing to help design those kind of systems. Myself included!
The Big Summary TL:DR
So you couldn't make it to the end, here is the short list that gets straight to the point:
-(Alien)For a new movement system regardless of my person thoughts of how it performs. You will have to make sure that somehow you break down the movement systems for any current vet to learn the new changes quickly. A video on the forums that's hard to find wont cut it. Have something in game linking to the 'best' tutorial video out there.
-(Marine) Forcing teamwork is a slippery slope to work with. While Armory humping is sometimes an issue, it's often not a serious problem. An easy tweak is to encourage welder uses as the balance mod does already, but decrease an armoies ability to heal armor. Try forcing to always look at the armory to gain armor over time at a slow rate? That way you can't twitch look at the armory for a free burst of extra super durable Armor hp.
-(Marine) Rifle spread, why change to something that's a total random cone? It should always be focused towards the center. I'd have a variable cone then a fully random bullet spread.
-Everything else. I actually enjoy most of the new gameplay elements in terms of adding the much needed variety to ns2. So good work on everything else.
Since you finally made it to the end, hopefully you come away with some stellar new ideas and hopefully a more refined direction on what you think to do with the game. Player, Dev, and otherwise!
Yeah, currently there isn't really a hard cap, but people have said that its max is about 40 as a speedcap, but its not possible to ever reach unless if someone made a jump map specifically made to reach that speed. I've been practicing the current walljump quite a bit now and usually a consistent 13.7-14 speed and when i'm hitting the walls properly and getting the right combination i get to about 15.7~. Which is WAY too high. For a good example:
I just gotta say... I didn't like the alien movement at first but after about 15h of gameplay it has totally grown on me and I like it more than vanilla. Particularly because it allows a new player to learn marines and aliens at a reasonably even rate. In in current vanilla form, a new alien can trounce a new marine after about a week of play.
Furthermore the changes to the comm and khamm are awesome and make the commander a much more vital part of game (current alien comm could just be removed from the game and buildings given to gorges and no one would know the difference. New khamm really allows one to be clever/sneaky).
I love BT over vanilla because it seems to be a better crafted game that will keep new players around longer. Also, I want to reiterate a point that joshhh makes below me... once you learn the basic movements you find that they're really pretty fun and give you a lot of new options for combat.
The only thing it needs is a tutorial for new players which gets them started on how to approach alien movement; right now there is no indication from the game that aliens have a special series of movement techniques.
I'd like someone from the balance mod break down how to simplify the movement from the BT. Since I honestly haven't really studied it much and currently aren't a great source of learning it.
BTSkulk:
BTFade:
Skulk movement, in the most basic form, is a combination of A-D strafe jumping in conjunction with chaining wall jumps. You can slowly gain speed with just A-D strafe jumping, but the walls are really the key. There are some videos floating around here somewhere.
Fade movement is really easy to pick up. Tap your blink key to gain speed, then either A-D strafe jump to sustain your speed or simply use W+space (which works but you lose speed slowly.) This replaces the old shadow step, double jump combo for navigating the map. As for actual combat with the new fade, I have not really gotten it down yet. I have been playing it more like the old NS1 fade. Go in for a swipe and get out without losing any momentum. If you try to stop by a marine for too long, you get raped cuz-brick-fade.
I was in the same boat you are right now, Bitey. I hated the movement for the last few weeks. It has slowly grown on be though. Once you get basic skulk movement down, you realize how much more you can do with it. There is something about bombing an unsuspecting marine at 14 speed that is quite enjoyable. Fade movement feels better too. I think Andi has found a good ratio of movement/energy and health/armor with the new fade so you don't feel so squishy anymore.
It is ridiculous to stop playing just because you have to learn new mechanics...
Are you people 80 years old or just too lazy? Or are you simply afraid of change?
Pathetic...
Laziness has nothing to do with it. This for example is why cod is not a serious comp game...every year a whole new game comes out with a whole new set of things to learn. People who are looking to succeed at a game don't want change, they expect a consistent game in which they can master every aspect of.
https://elite.callofduty.com/esports/championship A million dollar prize pool seems serious enough for me.
And I don't believe people want Ns2 to be changed to Ns1, simply a matter of making the game better overall even if that means going back to the roots of Natural selection.
Ns2 vanilla is so stale and the mechanics behind it offer so little that I don't understand how anyone can enjoy it after playing the game for a while.
you will notice that core gameplay mechanics issues come up relatively infrequently, as compared to performance and unpleasant public play experience due to team stacking/vets raping rookies as a reason for not playing anymore.
While improving a game's content is always worthwhile (though 'improvement' is subjective), i think looking at BT as an answer for the player retention issues, outside of a small minority of elite players atleast, is simply not realistic.
ZZZZ good job linking to a thread that describes a problem every single NS1 player has known about since NS1 released.
For NS2 its performance and the lack of a decent matchmaking/ranking system to keep reasonably equal teams. I think you also need to factor in development time requirements, and a matchmaking system that works well would require significant time.
Remember that the Balance Mod changes are essentially nothing new ... OP points out years of balancing, a lot of which was done by us in Beta. Most things in the changes list for the BM have already been implemented at times during NS2 dev.
Remember all those posts we made about 'if only performance was good enough for this, it would work' ... ?
Well now we might have to do a bit of forced un-sticky-plastering balancing in order to realise the potential of NS2.
Ns2 vanilla is so stale and the mechanics behind it offer so little that I don't understand how anyone can enjoy it after playing the game for a while.
not that I disagree but weren't you trying to convince me otherwise less than a few months ago :P
So after putting some more time into balance test I am rethinking my prior thoughts on BT being a bad idea. The new gameplay creates a whole new environment for ns2 and tons of new openings and strategies for both the aliens and marines.
There are still some problems with the current BT (overpowered early egg drops, umbra, exo rush). In general I am not upset about BT being implemented into vanilla. I suggest everyone go ahead and start putting more hours in BT because I have been having fun playing NS2 for the first time in a long time with BT.
ZZZZ good job linking to a thread that describes a problem every single NS1 player has known about since NS1 released.
For NS2 its performance and the lack of a decent matchmaking/ranking system to keep reasonably equal teams. I think you also need to factor in development time requirements, and a matchmaking system that works well would require significant time.
I think it pretty seriously undermines the entire basis for the mod - that the gameplay is somehow turning players off - atleast outside of a tiny minority of players.
if you are aware of the issue, why are you totally ignoring it and advocating a course of action that will more than likely compound the problem, providing at best a short term gain at the expense of the long term imo.
I think seeing as to a large extent, the driving force for this mod is the competitive community, i think its worthwhile for us to examine the feelings of the wider ns2 community about said mod.
So after putting some more time into balance test I am rethinking my prior thoughts on BT being a bad idea. The new gameplay creates a whole new environment for ns2 and tons of new openings and strategies for both the aliens and marines.
There are still some problems with the current BT (overpowered early egg drops, umbra, exo rush). In general I am not upset about BT being implemented into vanilla. I suggest everyone go ahead and start putting more hours in BT because I have been having fun playing NS2 for the first time in a long time with BT.
yay!
I don't think anyone thinks BT is perfect at the moment, personally I actually think it's in pretty bad shape at time of writing. And I'm probably one of it's biggest supporters and players. But opening up gameplay possibilities is the entire purpose and should be pushed.
I think it pretty seriously undermines the entire basis for the mod - that the gameplay is somehow turning players off - atleast outside of a tiny minority of players.
if you are aware of the issue, why are you totally ignoring it and advocating a course of action that will more than likely compound the problem, providing at best a short term gain at the expense of the long term imo.
I think seeing as to a large extent, the driving force for this mod is the competitive community, i think its worthwhile for us to examine the feelings of the wider ns2 community about said mod.
I think the basic goal of the BT mod is to create an overall better game, that should be more fun for both new players as well as veterans. Whether or not the current changes would accomplish that is food for thought, and can be discussed. But posting a thread on NS2 reddit in which people complain about team stacking, skill disparity and performance isn't an argument against the bt mod in itself. It is however definitely an indication that there's still more to be done. But there's no point discussing those issues in a BT mod thread.
well, seeing as one of the stated aims of BT is to improve the game via increasing the skill ceiling and thus increasing the skill disparity, that this is considered one of the main obstacles to enjoyment of vanilla NS2 by a less hardcore but much bigger audience makes it very much an argument against implementing BT imo. seeing as this is not a direct feedback thread for BT, but rather a more general thread discussing whether or not this should be implemented at all i dont see whats wrong with it? hardcore players and veterans tend to live in 'bubbles' of sorts, i thought it was worth providing some perspective.
well, seeing as one of the stated aims of BT is to improve the game via increasing the skill ceiling and thus increasing the skill disparity, that this is considered one of the main obstacles to enjoyment of vanilla NS2 by a less hardcore but much bigger audience makes it very much an argument against implementing BT imo. seeing as this is not a direct feedback thread for BT, but rather a more general thread discussing whether or not this should be implemented at all i dont see whats wrong with it? hardcore players and veterans tend to live in 'bubbles' of sorts, i thought it was worth providing some perspective.
Yes, I understand what you're getting at. But with that sort of reasoning, you could argue that the best way for NS2 to move forward, is to lower the skill ceiling drastically in an attempt to close the gap between new players and veteran players as much as possible. You must agree that's not in the best interest of this game and it's playerbase. For thesame reason you can't really argue against any potential increase of the skill ceiling. (I'm not even sure bt mod really raises the skill ceiling all that much anyway)
The skill disparity issue is something that needs to be adressed for sure, but it's an issue outside of the range of the bt mod. You can try to alleviate the problem with good tutorials, bots and matchmaking, but not by tinkering with the skill ceiling.
So after putting some more time into balance test I am rethinking my prior thoughts on BT being a bad idea. The new gameplay creates a whole new environment for ns2 and tons of new openings and strategies for both the aliens and marines.
There are still some problems with the current BT (overpowered early egg drops, umbra, exo rush). In general I am not upset about BT being implemented into vanilla. I suggest everyone go ahead and start putting more hours in BT because I have been having fun playing NS2 for the first time in a long time with BT.
BT should be a playground for new ideas and tweaks, where very little should make the cut because many things are tried... If BT became an official release it would destroy the community no one who plays a game wants to have to relearn the game every 6 months. sweeping changes are terrible and should be a thing of the past left in the days of beta.
BT should be a playground for new ideas and tweaks, where very little should make the cut because many things are tried... If BT became an official release it would destroy the community no one who plays a game wants to have to relearn the game every 6 months. sweeping changes are terrible and should be a thing of the past left in the days of beta.
this would be a valid point except ns2 is still pretty much a beta so it's pretty necessary unfortunately
I don´t really understand what there is to learn in vanilla NS2. Mostly it is just generall FPS skills and positioning that you could already learn from NS1. When in comes to skulk or fade movement, I mastered those in under 20 hours. There already was two beta tournaments when I started to play NS2 but that didn´t stop me playing in best team of the game with only few hours under my belt. That wouldn´t have been possible if there actually were steep learning curve.
while i can understand what you guys are saying that the game is unpolished and arguably unfinished, asserting it to be a beta doesnt make it so - the game went gold, and they released and sold it as such. i think the expectation of relative post release gameplay stability is a fair one to make. I imagine that some people will bring up the example of NS1 and its radical rerererelease's, but i think a F2P mod for the most popular fps of the past decade and an independent commercial game people have paid money for allow for different things.
@tane, its pretty normal for players to go from one similar game to the other and perform at a high level relatively quickly. this happens in all manner of games and real sports - bottas qualifed 3rd for canada despite being a rookie, does that mean F1 cars are easymode or rather that hes simply a really good driver? or SC1 pro's dominating the SC2 scene...
Personally, im not sure that the skill curve increases from the BT changes, a skilled player remains skilled etc, however, i think it does increase the skill to capability gap - increasing or exaggerating the effects of skill. gratifying to those at the top of the skill pyramid certainly, but no doubt daunting for those at the bottom.
Yes, that is what I implied. However, as we know, the movement code is totally different and people are here complaining that they have to learn new movement system. My point was, that there wasn´t anything to learn in the first place.
well, as someone who has been playing FPS at a high level for the past 10 years, alot of which would have been dedicated to NS1, your experience with learning the way the game plays will probably not be representative of the other 399999 people who bought NS2. perspective is everything.
Well, this is kind of fun posting here. Indeed, my experience and my being in this world doesn´t correlate to another being completely. Those naive objectivist are so boring! Perspective is everything bro!
However, I never mastered NS1 movement because it had unlimited debt. NS2 don´t have that luxury. I doesn´t matter what previous gaming experience you might have, once you learn it, there really isn´t anything new to master.
i didnt want to spell it out too clearly because its a slightly confrontational thing to say and because it was implied in what i posted but here goes - lack of perspective breeds a sense of entitlement. a purely self interested, entitled and elite minority in control - what could possibly go wrong?
Warning: Elitism card has just been played. If you are highly experienced and knowledgeable on subjects ns1, ns2 and/or competitive playing all your opinions and knowledge are now void and you are only allowed to agree with the card holder.
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited June 2013
How does everyone here feel about Skulk maximum speed?
While ("tactical/combat") speed does not consistently improves survival against weapons, it definitely improves Skulks' ability to out-maneuver marines ("strategic speed"), who have no skill-based enhancements to counterbalance Skulk's speed. I imagine Skulk harassment on extractors/bases to be a lot more effective at high skill levels.
When is Skulk "skill-based" movement too fast (in BT mod)? How was it counter-balanced in NS?
How does everyone here feel about Skulk maximum speed?
While ("tactical/combat") speed does not consistently improves survival against weapons, it definitely improves Skulks' ability to out-maneuver marines ("strategic speed"), who have no skill-based enhancements to counterbalance Skulk's speed. I imagine Skulk harassment on extractors/bases to be a lot more effective at high skill levels.
When is Skulk "skill-based" movement too fast (in BT mod)? How was it counter-balanced in NS?
I think it's slightly too fast
I've always felt that marines have aim and positioning which is a sufficient counter that scales directly with skill
I'm okay with 1.5-2x base speed as a general rule, it is too fast when Skulks no longer have *any* regard for positioning - for example, a long hallway should always be a marine's domain.
it's counter-balanced by having predictable curved movement - but in NS1 walljump wasn't the main method for gaining speed so I'm quite interested to see how this turns out in real gameplay with the luajit patch ^^
in Quake it's possible to predict shots with the knowledge that they have to land every jump - but with the BT movement there's no such restriction. this is partially what made Warsow gameplay very fluid and dynamic with its walljum + bunny system - I'm really interested to see how it all pans out
Comments
I'm not sure if my point was clear. In order to be capable of providing good and effective feedback of the balance mod, I should be good at the end game of the mod, which implies being able to use each life form to its potential. In order to do that, I must invest time relearning how to play life forms according to the balance mod. Then I can provide feedback if something if OP or not. Well, that's a lot of time invested relearning something that might not ever be relevant in a competitive environment, or will change completely in a few days, and time that could be spent practicing vanilla. My point is changes to the game, post launch, should not be so sweeping and sudden.
Also, the state the game is in, combined with these rumors that the mod is coming, does not inspire confidence in the stability of the gaming platform.
After a coinflip decision, I decided to post this here rather then the actual BT thread post in the general thread.
ENJOY and BEGIN
________
There are so many changes in the BT that trying to go over every single one takes up so much time that I'd rather focus only on the things I have an actual issues with. The prime complaint of mine is simply the movement system that's being crafted to be in place. When I played the BT I jumped directly into a 6v6 with no experience expect what I knew from live. The goal was to give me the best feeling of what it would be like for the rest of the community who simply 'play' the game and nothing else. This lead me to an experience that for the most part was semi-enjoyable on marine, and a larger struggle on alien.
Aliens
The alien side was stressful due to the fact that all forms of live movement are essentially removed. If you claim that something is left over, then you learned skulk movement differently from myself and I give you congratulations on being a true master. My struggles came from the raw overwhelming changes to everything having a different feel, so that lead to a very unenjoyable experience. It's not to say that I will want to burn the BT alien side with fire I could probably love it in the future given some extra cuddling, but if my first impression is this negative towards the change what does that say about someone who's uninformed? The movement being a complete rewrite means that none of the experience learned can be transferred over, this leads to a knowledge that in order to retain the confidence of movement I had prior, would to me mean at least 10-20hrs of focus on the task.
I ask what the real issue is with live skulk movement, my personal thought are that it's too slow. The B239 skulk had great potential and was also easy to teach and explain, however with small flaws in different places it could have been polished up to be more enjoyable for all parties. The current live skulk is something that is extremely stressful to play due to a lack of easy ways to gain a boost of speed to leave fights or pressure into a room easily. Why was the thought of never looking into the past versions of wall jumping reexamined? The last round of complaints I remember from back then it was too easy/simple. Which is hardly a problem given the fact that movement should be very straightforward.
Here is a complexity example of the BT movement vs Live:
Explain how to gain and maintain speed as skulk and fade?
Live Skulk: Jump off walls and chain wall jumps together to gain speed. jump off from higher points for an extra speed boost.
Fade: Shadow step in one of the 8 directions, and utilize your double jump for extra travel. Use air control to make sharp turns.
**If there is one problem with live Fade, it's that shadowstep costs too little so that energy management is not very important for maintaining movement. Another problem is that explaining air control is very challenging.
I'd like someone from the balance mod break down how to simplify the movement from the BT. Since I honestly haven't really studied it much and currently aren't a great source of learning it.
BTSkulk:
BTFade:
Honestly if you take a more combined approach to the movement setups utilizing both live and BT creations you should be able to get something that is not a whole new movement system. Instead you could create a potent upgrade which leads to ease of use and a more complex utilization. First would be the implementation of jump querying on live, that could easily be patched in with any build. Second would be to add in how the acceleration from walls occurred in patches prior to b239 perhaps making it harder/take longer to gain speed by chaining jumps together. Then utilize adding a speed cap of 11/13 so that skulks aren't that much faster then lerks, and make sure that it's challenging to keep the rate of speed around those levels.
To sum it up, the movement doesn't need to be rewritten it simply needs to be tweaked in small ways from live to create a much more enjoyable experience. The fact that the fade was overhauled is something of a different approach, and I still don't really have an understanding as to why it was changed other then to just 'change it up.' Alien movement is alittle too far off from live build and in my view a few extra attempts should be made to bridge the gap.
Marine
The marine game was substantially more enjoyable for the reasoning that it actually carries over much of the same skills learned from the live build. This leads to an experience that gives a fresh approach, while still maintaining most of the gameplay functional. Overall it's a mostly positive change from the field players view, and I can see that almost all of the current changes to marine game could be ported over. My only minor gripes revolved around the AR spread changes and the new armory approach.
While it's not game breaking, the question of why the AR has more spread deserves a valid question. I dont really recall anything of frustration happening the live build as a result of rifles appearing overpowered in anyway and while I haven't played much of the BT, I'm curious as to why this change was thrown in if there was any significant problem. The fault with the rifle is that the spread is truly random, so you have no real guarantee that shooting in the center will land the first, last, or middle shots. This leads to more wasted ammo, less accuracy, and stopping power in the long term. If you're going to attempt to continue utilize a random cone fire, the cone should start smaller at the start of shooting then grow over time. Sorry but I'm not sold that random cones are enjoyable, just look at how people complain about random shotgun spreads in the past.
If the original problem with the AR is that it was too hard to use, perhaps checking into the scenario of lowering the amount of bullets per clip, raising the damage per bullet, and adjusting the rate of fire. A big problem with alot of newer players is the sheer amount of wasted bullets fired from the AR, mostly due to player inexperience, skill, or the enemies movement. A larger bullet, slower ROF, and more damage could attempt to alliterate some of the rifles high skill requirement.
The armory change is probably one of the more understand fixes put into the game, but I believe that this approach is simply too hardlined and trying to force teamwork onto a team. It was once tried in the past, then removed. The reasons for it's removal I've forgotten, but why not just try a slowed armory healing/armor recovery? This is @andi, if the real problem is that marine teams turtle, in public games they already lose for doing that. Unless the new marine changes have made a marine turtle extremely valid, that seems that something else may need to be considered.
AA's cost too much, unless you rewrite how they work for healing armor, weapons, and other factors. And make it a much quicker upgrade for a field ARMOR healing Armory. In fact if you're going to change the armory to not heal armor anymore, then it might as well be called supply station. As you get guns and weapons, but no armor.
All in all, most marine changes would probably be fine. But it's always best to be wary about trying to force teamwork onto people, and there should typically be an option to solo heal from something much easier then say a mac or welder.
Bitey's view's on why NS2 loses new players
--I wont say anything about performance, because that's a whole different basket of things not relating directly to gameplay. And hopefully luaJit takes a big bite out of that issue.
If the balance test is trying to settle the imbalance in the core of the game by it's namesake, then the real issues with why people leave still aren't being targeted. It's never been much about the state of the gameplay in terms of who wins what, or why one team wins over another. After all consider that what determines a win is usually reliant on what players understand they need to do in order to create a win. New players pick the game up, start playing, and learning weapons. However in ns2 weapon mastery, frags, and raw personal skill only make up part of what it takes to win. A major problem with ns2 is that nothing in public game play conveys the decision making tactics that lead to repeated and formulaic success.
To have an example of this, you merely need to look at the swaying wins and losses of both public games and PCW/scrim/matches. Aliens have, and always will be favored given enough time simply because of the side being easier to play. The decision making process of the Khaara side is basic, defend your ground as needed and attack enemy buildings when openings are present. Just repeat that cycle, stay in the game, and wait for high lifeforms to help give you a push off point. This process shows in games where aliens win the majority of the time and typically every mistake a skulk makes can be overlooked for several deaths in a row minus trying to save those precious havestors. For everything else dying on the field is only an inconvenience due to the movement aliens enjoy. It takes multiple deaths in a row before the effects of repeated personal failure to make a sizable impact to team performance.
However, while the alien team is usually easier to play you can witness the mixed results of pub knowledge vs match knowledge when new competitive teams forms. Often any new alien team employ the wrong set of attacks and defenses that would ordinarly secure them a win. For example if a marine team pressures one havestor with a 4 man team, is the proper response to defend, hit marine rts, or hit marine start? Often those kind of decisions are real plays that make the best teams succeed. I would credit Arc as being an example of almost always making the right play call, which is why winning seems to be their specialty.
The contrast to this is how the marine side struggles to take victories away past the 5 minute openings mark of the game. For a marine player he must always try to outplay the alien side by several factors of performance. The problems not only come from the multiple jobs the basic marines must employ. You are the builder, defender, and attacker which leads to multiple different things to be considered before making any action. Each of those roles are crucial to survive a game against the alien menace. If you fail to build you're economy and tech falls behind, if you fail to defend then all the time spent building needs to simply be repeated, and if you simply never attack into alien territory you're still going to be doomed into failure simply because alien's are much more expendable while attacking into marines. Every small decision matters just as much as making sure every bullet counts, if you check the wrong corner and get fragged you may lose much more then your own weapon out of said mistake.
All of these issues collide together and form a game that is extremely daunting for any random new player to attempt to learn. So what needs to be strongly investigated is a method on how to teach a person the basics. More then just raw skills needed to shoot and perform, but several of the basic decision making foundations. A tutorial map would be the best place to start, and I'd tried to hand that to the community who are full of people willing to help design those kind of systems. Myself included!
The Big Summary TL:DR
So you couldn't make it to the end, here is the short list that gets straight to the point:
-(Alien)For a new movement system regardless of my person thoughts of how it performs. You will have to make sure that somehow you break down the movement systems for any current vet to learn the new changes quickly. A video on the forums that's hard to find wont cut it. Have something in game linking to the 'best' tutorial video out there.
-(Marine) Forcing teamwork is a slippery slope to work with. While Armory humping is sometimes an issue, it's often not a serious problem. An easy tweak is to encourage welder uses as the balance mod does already, but decrease an armoies ability to heal armor. Try forcing to always look at the armory to gain armor over time at a slow rate? That way you can't twitch look at the armory for a free burst of extra super durable Armor hp.
-(Marine) Rifle spread, why change to something that's a total random cone? It should always be focused towards the center. I'd have a variable cone then a fully random bullet spread.
-Everything else. I actually enjoy most of the new gameplay elements in terms of adding the much needed variety to ns2. So good work on everything else.
Since you finally made it to the end, hopefully you come away with some stellar new ideas and hopefully a more refined direction on what you think to do with the game. Player, Dev, and otherwise!
Bitey
You can reach 17 on tram going from server -> hub. I've not been able to past this point since the skulk movement nerf.
Furthermore the changes to the comm and khamm are awesome and make the commander a much more vital part of game (current alien comm could just be removed from the game and buildings given to gorges and no one would know the difference. New khamm really allows one to be clever/sneaky).
I love BT over vanilla because it seems to be a better crafted game that will keep new players around longer. Also, I want to reiterate a point that joshhh makes below me... once you learn the basic movements you find that they're really pretty fun and give you a lot of new options for combat.
The only thing it needs is a tutorial for new players which gets them started on how to approach alien movement; right now there is no indication from the game that aliens have a special series of movement techniques.
Dragon has reached 20 on veil but it would be next to impossible in an actual game.
Skulk movement, in the most basic form, is a combination of A-D strafe jumping in conjunction with chaining wall jumps. You can slowly gain speed with just A-D strafe jumping, but the walls are really the key. There are some videos floating around here somewhere.
Fade movement is really easy to pick up. Tap your blink key to gain speed, then either A-D strafe jump to sustain your speed or simply use W+space (which works but you lose speed slowly.) This replaces the old shadow step, double jump combo for navigating the map. As for actual combat with the new fade, I have not really gotten it down yet. I have been playing it more like the old NS1 fade. Go in for a swipe and get out without losing any momentum. If you try to stop by a marine for too long, you get raped cuz-brick-fade.
I was in the same boat you are right now, Bitey. I hated the movement for the last few weeks. It has slowly grown on be though. Once you get basic skulk movement down, you realize how much more you can do with it. There is something about bombing an unsuspecting marine at 14 speed that is quite enjoyable.
https://elite.callofduty.com/esports/championship A million dollar prize pool seems serious enough for me.
And I don't believe people want Ns2 to be changed to Ns1, simply a matter of making the game better overall even if that means going back to the roots of Natural selection.
Ns2 vanilla is so stale and the mechanics behind it offer so little that I don't understand how anyone can enjoy it after playing the game for a while.
http://www.reddit.com/r/ns2/comments/1fqu7k/ns2_has_a_very_serious_player_retention_problem/
you will notice that core gameplay mechanics issues come up relatively infrequently, as compared to performance and unpleasant public play experience due to team stacking/vets raping rookies as a reason for not playing anymore.
While improving a game's content is always worthwhile (though 'improvement' is subjective), i think looking at BT as an answer for the player retention issues, outside of a small minority of elite players atleast, is simply not realistic.
For NS2 its performance and the lack of a decent matchmaking/ranking system to keep reasonably equal teams. I think you also need to factor in development time requirements, and a matchmaking system that works well would require significant time.
Remember all those posts we made about 'if only performance was good enough for this, it would work' ... ?
Well now we might have to do a bit of forced un-sticky-plastering balancing in order to realise the potential of NS2.
There are still some problems with the current BT (overpowered early egg drops, umbra, exo rush). In general I am not upset about BT being implemented into vanilla. I suggest everyone go ahead and start putting more hours in BT because I have been having fun playing NS2 for the first time in a long time with BT.
I think it pretty seriously undermines the entire basis for the mod - that the gameplay is somehow turning players off - atleast outside of a tiny minority of players.
if you are aware of the issue, why are you totally ignoring it and advocating a course of action that will more than likely compound the problem, providing at best a short term gain at the expense of the long term imo.
I think seeing as to a large extent, the driving force for this mod is the competitive community, i think its worthwhile for us to examine the feelings of the wider ns2 community about said mod.
yay!
I don't think anyone thinks BT is perfect at the moment, personally I actually think it's in pretty bad shape at time of writing. And I'm probably one of it's biggest supporters and players. But opening up gameplay possibilities is the entire purpose and should be pushed.
I think the basic goal of the BT mod is to create an overall better game, that should be more fun for both new players as well as veterans. Whether or not the current changes would accomplish that is food for thought, and can be discussed. But posting a thread on NS2 reddit in which people complain about team stacking, skill disparity and performance isn't an argument against the bt mod in itself. It is however definitely an indication that there's still more to be done. But there's no point discussing those issues in a BT mod thread.
Yes, I understand what you're getting at. But with that sort of reasoning, you could argue that the best way for NS2 to move forward, is to lower the skill ceiling drastically in an attempt to close the gap between new players and veteran players as much as possible. You must agree that's not in the best interest of this game and it's playerbase. For thesame reason you can't really argue against any potential increase of the skill ceiling. (I'm not even sure bt mod really raises the skill ceiling all that much anyway)
The skill disparity issue is something that needs to be adressed for sure, but it's an issue outside of the range of the bt mod. You can try to alleviate the problem with good tutorials, bots and matchmaking, but not by tinkering with the skill ceiling.
CHANGING LIVES, ONLY @ LOCKLEAR'S BT PUGS.
this would be a valid point except ns2 is still pretty much a beta so it's pretty necessary unfortunately
@tane, its pretty normal for players to go from one similar game to the other and perform at a high level relatively quickly. this happens in all manner of games and real sports - bottas qualifed 3rd for canada despite being a rookie, does that mean F1 cars are easymode or rather that hes simply a really good driver? or SC1 pro's dominating the SC2 scene...
Personally, im not sure that the skill curve increases from the BT changes, a skilled player remains skilled etc, however, i think it does increase the skill to capability gap - increasing or exaggerating the effects of skill. gratifying to those at the top of the skill pyramid certainly, but no doubt daunting for those at the bottom.
We'll have to wait and see what happens.
However, I never mastered NS1 movement because it had unlimited debt. NS2 don´t have that luxury. I doesn´t matter what previous gaming experience you might have, once you learn it, there really isn´t anything new to master.
While ("tactical/combat") speed does not consistently improves survival against weapons, it definitely improves Skulks' ability to out-maneuver marines ("strategic speed"), who have no skill-based enhancements to counterbalance Skulk's speed. I imagine Skulk harassment on extractors/bases to be a lot more effective at high skill levels.
When is Skulk "skill-based" movement too fast (in BT mod)? How was it counter-balanced in NS?
I've always felt that marines have aim and positioning which is a sufficient counter that scales directly with skill
I'm okay with 1.5-2x base speed as a general rule, it is too fast when Skulks no longer have *any* regard for positioning - for example, a long hallway should always be a marine's domain.
it's counter-balanced by having predictable curved movement - but in NS1 walljump wasn't the main method for gaining speed so I'm quite interested to see how this turns out in real gameplay with the luajit patch ^^
in Quake it's possible to predict shots with the knowledge that they have to land every jump - but with the BT movement there's no such restriction. this is partially what made Warsow gameplay very fluid and dynamic with its walljum + bunny system - I'm really interested to see how it all pans out